Rocks could help save prehistoric fish

Tuesday

Sep 10, 2013 at 12:01 AM

A new effort is being made in the James River to help save an endangered and prehistoric fish.The James River Association and its partners are attempting to save the Atlantic sturgeon - the river's largest fish - from extinction. The Atlantic sturgeon i

A new effort is being made in the James River to help save an endangered and prehistoric fish.

The James River Association and its partners are attempting to save the Atlantic sturgeon - the river's largest fish - from extinction. The Atlantic sturgeon is estimated to be 120 million years old and can reach over 14 feet in length, weigh 800 pounds and live for 60 years. The toothless bottom feeder was once prevalent in the James River, and has been credited with saving some early Jamestown settlers from starvation.

The preservation effort involves building an artificial reef in the river in the hopes of revitalizing the decimated species. In July, approximately 2,700 tons of rock donated by the Luck Stone Corp. were dropped from a barge provided by Coastal Designs into the river just south of the Varina-Enon Bridge.

The stones are expected to create a 70-foot by 300-foot by 2-foot high rocky river bed, an ideal spawning location for the Atlantic sturgeon. The species spends most of their adult lives in the ocean but return to their home river to spawn in both the fall and spring. Their long life span makes them slow to reproduce.

Decades of runoff into the river have covered its once rocky bottom with silt. Researchers believe the silt makes it harder for the fish to spawn. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there is only one known spawning population in the James River.

That, combined with overfishing in the late 1800s for sturgeon's meat and caviar, helped land the species on the endangered species list in 2012.

"The overfishing is the reason they dropped, and the loss of habitat is the reason they can't come back," Jamie Brunkow, lower James riverkeeper, said. "By establishing this reef, we are replacing what has been essentially lost by our actions."

Prior to 1890, it was estimated that 20,000 adult females inhabited the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, according to NOAA. Now, less than 300 spawning adults are estimated to occupy the James River.

Even though Virginia outlawed commercial harvesting in 1974 and a national ban followed in 1998, the sturgeon's population has never fully recovered.

This will be the third artificial reef created for the fish. The success of the previous reefs is still an unanswered question.

A $2 million federal grant to VCU and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries will aid future efforts to restore the Atlantic sturgeon.

Grants from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a partnership between The Nature Conservancy and the NOAA helped offset the $200,000 project cost. The grants will also aid future monitoring of the reef.

Let's hope the establishment of spawning grounds for the fish will help the Atlantic sturgeon rebound before they are lost to the region forever.

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